Open classess to local communities: A reflection analysis of a school environmental project

School Projects of Environmental Education (SPEE) promote discovery learning, through teamwork, by involving local communities, scientists, organizations, authorities and bodies and are carried out largely online in virtual environments. This research aimed to identify and highlight those characteristics of local communities that can be exploited by opening them up to classes with activities that are matched in experiential and inquiry teaching and learning. Specifically, through the frame of Education for Sustainable Development. This research required the development of a tool for the reflection analysis of environmental open classes in local communities with the open classes' learning environments and those components of learning environments, which support the inquiry teaching and learning procedure in a School Environmental Project. Teachers supplied students with focused questions and urged them to try to find their own answers. More specifically, teachers facilitated students as co-researchers to choose their own issues, to set the queries and decide the best methods to conduct their inquiry. This research demonstrates how Open Classes in social learning environments, offered experiences to students and teachers bringing them face to face with questionnaires, evidence, historical knowledge, and real problems, which had been missing from their previous learning and teaching experiences.